Friday, October 28, 2016

Mosul Campaign Day Eleven, Oct 27, 2016

The Mosul operation continued to go in fits and spurts. With
the first phase of the operation coming to an end, there are days when there
are fewer advances, which was what happened on October 27. On the other side,
IS was building its defenses while exploiting and murdering civilians. The U.S.
also tried to mediate between Iraq and Turkey once more, and there was more
displacement from the fighting.

From October 26-27, the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) and
Peshmerga freed over two dozen towns. On October 26 twenty towns were declared liberated,
but seven of them were said to have been reached in pervious days. Similarly,
on October 27 four more towns were cleared, but one of them the Kurds claimed
they had already gone through. Since 2014 Baghdad and Irbil have been using a
victory narrative that promotes constant advances and victories over the
Islamic State. Unfortunately that has led to some exaggeration as shown with
the examples above.

So far the joint forces have been pushing towards Mosul from
all sides but the west, but that is about to change. The Hashd and Federal
Police have been charged with capturing Tal Afar, an important border town with
Syria that has traditionally been used by IS to ferry in fighters and supplies
into Iraq. Hashd units started moving into position to
start this new phase in the offensive.

In al-Houd the residents rose up and
expelled the Islamic State. A resident who took part in the fight said they
asked the army for help but were turned down. He was none too pleased. This was
the third or fourth town that has rebelled against the militants since the
Mosul campaign started.

Details about how the Islamic State has been using human
shields have started coming out. The Washington
Post interviewed several people about what happened to them. One was
Mohammed Ali who retold when IS was leaving his village the group got on
loudspeakers and told the inhabitants they had to go with the fighters to be
used as shields or they would be killed.

Depending upon which stories you read the Islamic State has
either been evacuating Mosul from the start, or is sending in reinforcements. The
National
Iraqi News Agency for example talked with a Mosul resident who saw several
hundred IS fighters arrive from Raqqa. That same day Iraq
Oil Report heard from a civilian who claimed IS men were leaving the city.
The U.S. military however told CNN
that it had not seen any large movement of IS members in or out of Mosul.

What is not disputed is that the insurgents are preparing to
defend the city. IS was setting up concrete barriers and forcing people out of
their homes to lay booby-traps. The disadvantage the group is facing is that it
only has a few thousand fighters to protect a huge urban area. Another issue is
that there is a large population inside still, including IS families. That
means the group cannot lay down defenses in depth as it did in Tikrit and
Ramadi previously, which were almost empty of people. IS is said to have left
much of the eastern side of the city, and that is likely where there will be
more bunkers, IEDs, etc.

IS continued with its executions in Mosul. 22 more people
were reportedly killed.

The number of displaced went up again. On October
26 the United Nations had 10,500 people having left their homes. The next
day that had gone up to 11,700. The Associated
Press found that some of the displaced were being arbitrarily detained and
some even executed as they escaped the Islamic State. AP talked to a local
security man at a checkpoint who said he had arrested 100 people on suspicion
that they were IS supporters and killed two of them. In the wake of every
security operation there is vetting that needs to be done to weed out
insurgents. The problem is that this is often done in an opaque fashion, people
have been held for long periods, sometimes incommunicado, and entire towns have
sometimes been declared off limits and been left empty.

Finally, the U.S. is still attempting to mend fences between
Iraq and Turkey. President Obama called
Turkish President Recep Erdogan on October 26. Obama told Erdogan he should
concentrate on fighting the Islamic State and cooperate with Baghdad. Given
Ankara’s belligerent comments and attitude the White House’s attempt probably
fell on deaf ears.

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About Me

Musings On Iraq was started in 2008 to explain the political, economic, security and cultural situation in Iraq via original articles and interviews. If you wish to contact me personally my email is: motown67@aol.com